Chapel Hill was selected as the site in 1792, the cornerstone was laid in 1793, and the institution opened in 1795. At first the faculty consisted of only one professor and a tutor. The University of Tennessee, as we have seen, traces its origin back to Blount College, which was founded in 1794. The present site was selected in 1826. In 1869 an agricultural and mechanical college was established as a department of the East Tennessee University, and that institution was thus made the recipient of the public lands donated by the United States government under the Morrill act of 1862. This made it possible to begin the building of a state university. Ten years later the present title, University of Tennessee, was adopted. The University of Georgia had its origin in a charter granted by the state legislature in 1785, but as the only foundation was "an unproductive, and, for the most part, uninhabited tract of land," it was several years before anything was done. Finally, in 1801, the present site of Athens was chosen, and during the same year Franklin College opened. Out of this institution grew later the University of Georgia. Georgia's share of the funds arising from the sale of public lands under the Morrill act of 1862 was transferred to the trustees of the University of Georgia May 1, 1872, and they at once opened the Georgia State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts as a coördinate department of the institution at Athens. In October of the same year the trustees of the university entered into a contract with the local trustees of the North Georgia Agricultural College, situated at Dahlonega, by which this institution became a department of the State University. In 1873, by arrangement with the local trustees of the Georgia Medical College at Augusta, founded in 1829, this institution became the medical department of the State University. In 1867 the Lumpkin School at Athens was merged into and became the law department of the State University. The state constitution of 1877 prohibited the appropriation of state funds for higher education to any other institution than the University of Georgia. As a result the following institutions have been established as branches of the State University: The Georgia School of Technology, at Atlanta, established in 1885; the Georgia Normal and Industrial College for girls, at Milledgeville, established in 1889; the Georgia Industrial College for colored youths, near Savannah, established in 1890; and the State Normal School, near Athens, established in 1895. South Carolina College, now the University of South Carolina, was chartered in 1801 and opened to students in 1805. It continued in successful operation down to the war, when its work was interrupted and its buildings used as a Confederate hospital. It was reopened in 1866 as the University of South Carolina, but it suffered greatly during the reconstruction period, and in 1877 was finally closed. In 1878 it was opened again as South Carolina College, constituting for a time, with Claflin College at Orangeburg (a school for the colored race), the State University. Finally, in 1906, the name South Carolina College was changed to the University of South Carolina. The bill establishing the University of Virginia was passed by the legislature in 1819, largely through the untiring efforts of Joseph Carrington Cabell, whose aid Jefferson had enlisted years before. Jefferson himself had been working to this end since 1779, when he introduced his first plan for a system of public education in the Virginia Assembly. The University of Virginia was the last of Jefferson's mortal cares. He was its real founder. He planned and designed the group of buildings, and personally superintended every detail of construction. The university was opened in 1825, the year before Jefferson's death. Jefferson's genius was versatile and selective. He was a close and acute observer of men and institutions as well as of natural phenomena. His educational ideas were derived largely from European sources, but adapted to meet the special needs of America. Among his first professors Jefferson selected several foreigners. The chairs of ethics, law, and politics were for practical reasons reserved for Americans. The most significant feature of Jefferson's university scheme was the breaking away from the old conventional curriculum of American colleges and the creation of separate schools, with the elective system as the basis. This elective system has been adopted in whole or in part by many other American colleges and universities. Another contribution made by Jefferson, namely, student government, has also found its way into many other institutions. Several of the educational policies of the University of Virginia, such as the honor system, and the division into separate schools, each giving a certificate of graduation in that particular school, left their mark on the higher institutions of the South. After the war the University of Virginia was greatly hampered by the lack of a permanent executive head, and shared in the general depression that handicapped the whole South, though it at no time in its history yielded its position of wide influence and leadership. In spite of the fact that the presidential form had become almost universal at the South, as it had at the North, the University of Virginia clung to the older form of government until the year 1904, when it fell into line with the practice in vogue at other institutions. It is to-day a rapidly growing institution, strong and vigorous. The University of Alabama was established by act of the General Assembly of that state Dec. 18, 1820, which act donated to it 46,000 acres of land within the state which had recently been donated to the state by the Congress of the United States. In 1827 Tuscaloosa was selected for the site of the university, and in 1831 it was first opened for students. In 1865 the buildings were completely destroyed by a troop of Federal cavalry. The erection of new buildings was begun in 1867 and instruction was resumed in 1869. Through the efforts of Senator Morgan a second donation of 46,000 acres of land within the state was made by Congress in 1884, in restitution of the losses incurred in 1865. In 1907 the state legislature appropriated $400,000 to be used as a fund for the erection of new buildings. It is now a strong institution. State universities now exist in all the Southern states. The University of Missouri was organized in 1841; the Louisiana State University in 1860; the West Virginia University in 1867; the University of Arkansas in 1872; the University of Texas in 1883; and the University of Oklahoma in 1892. The University of Florida (after several abortive attempts had been made to found such an institution in that state) was finally organized in its present form in 1905. The State College of Kentucky has recently become the State University of Kentucky. Two rather unique state institutions deserve to be mentioned here, both of which have had a more than local influence and reputation-the Virginia Military Institute, organized in 1839, and the South Carolina Military Academy, organized in 1843. Both institutions are of a strictly military character, and |